Posts Tagged ‘bodyweight exercise variations’

Bodyweight Exercises Solutions

Scientists have made a shocking discovery about a new form of workouts featuring bodyweight exercises. According to researchers, “To our amazement, subjects have been able to build muscle and burn fat without expensive gym equipment or fancy infomercial gadgets bought at 4am for $39.95. We’re shocked by these results.”

Haha! Of course, I’m just kidding about the scientific study, but the truth is that most people just don’t give bodyweight exercise training the respect it deserves. After all, gymnasts develop lean, powerful, sexy bodies with bodyweight training, so imagine what it can do for you.

I first discovered bodyweight exercises back as a poor student after my first year of college. During my high school years I had been a gym rat, lifting weights up to 6 days per week. However, when I went away to school, I quickly got sucked into the dorm-room lifestyle, skipping the gym for weeks on end. Sure I played a few sports, but the food – and drink – that I was consuming had a real downfall on my muscles and was a boost for belly fat.

At Christmas I went home, and being too broke to spend the money on an expensive gym day pass, I started reading some of my old Men’s Health magazines that were lying around the house.

Eventually I stumbled across an article on bodyweight exercises, complete with a circuit workout that I could do with no equipment. This was a massive, life-changing breakthrough. The workout I did that day in my bedroom would literally lead to a career in creating at home workouts focusing on no-equipment bodyweight workouts. Plus, I’d eventually have my own workouts published in Men’s Health.

But that didn’t happen overnight. I quickly realized that even bodyweight routines could get boring fast if you didn’t have a variety of exercises for your routine. So this began a long journey to discover all of the bodyweight exercises in the world.

As a young, naïve trainer, I thought this would be an easy task, but here I am over 15 years later, and still learning. Just this year I’ve discovered the “Kong” exercise, the Screw Press, and a few others from the ShapeShifter workout bodyweight coaches. Pretty impressive stuff what you can do with your own body weight and some creativity.

I want to invite you to join my journey – a never ending quest to not only discover the hundreds of bodyweight exercise variations, but also to help over 1 Million men and women – just like you – to transform their bodies and their lives. I know that we can do it, no equipment required.

On our journey, you’ll discover how to do bodyweight workouts that are better than most workouts people do with cardio equipment or weight machines. You’ll also benefit from the cost-effectiveness of being able to train without equipment, doing fat burning workouts anytime, anywhere.

I’ve trained in hotel rooms in Sydney, on beaches in New Zealand, beside rooftop pools in Dubai, in my bedroom in Canada, in the Zakopane mountains of Poland, in the forests of Lithuania, at resorts (nice and not so nice) in Mexico, and while stuck in ill-equipped hotel gyms all across America. Like I said, it’s been an epic bodyweight journey, both figuratively and literally.

Of course, and don’t get me wrong, I love my weight training routines. I still do them weekly, but as my friend Jason Ferruggia taught me, we need to use bodyweight versions of exercises whenever possible.

For example, instead of doing seated machine rows, we should use bodyweight rows instead, where you lie under a bar, and row your chest up to it. For beginners, bend your knees to reduce the resistance. As another example, use dips and advanced pushups instead of the pec-dec machine. You’ll build more everyday strength by using bodyweight exercise methods.

And having an incredible library of bodyweight exercises allows you to take your workouts outside of a stuffy gym, basement, or hotel room into the fresh air. You can literally do these exercises at a park, without having to drag heavy weights.

I also enjoy kettlebell training, and appreciate the fact that you can do kettlebell workouts outside, however, it can be extremely difficult and annoying to drag a 35lb – or more – kettlebell down the street to the park. And it’s worse trying to take it home after you’ve finished your kettlebell workout.

But the biggest concern most of my clients have is, “Can I really get as good of a workout with bodyweight exercises?”

Fortunately, the answer in most cases is, “Yes. You should even be able to get a better workout with only bodyweight moves.”

That said, let’s take a look at what bodyweight workouts can’t do. First of all, if you want to be a champion bodybuilder, there’s no doubt that at some point you’re going to need to lift weights. Bodyweight exercises can build muscle, especially with dips, pullups, chin-ups, and single-leg exercises, but for maximum muscle, there are no replacements for squats, deadlifts, and heavy presses.

But think about it, how many pullups can you do right now? If you answered 10 or below, than you’ve just proven that a bodyweight exercise can be difficult enough to build strength and muscle. After all, if you wanted to build your back muscles with pulldowns, you’d choose a weight that you can only do about 10 times. So yes, bodyweight exercises, in many cases, can work as well as weighted exercises for building muscle in beginners, intermediate lifters, and even for some folks who have been around the gym for a long time.

The second thing bodyweight exercises can’t do for you is to turn you into a marathon runner. While I’ll show you a way to perform bodyweight exercises in a unique circuit workout style that burns fat and increases your heart rate dramatically, there’s simply no replacement for pounding the pavement if you truly want to run a marathon. But again, you can increase your cardiovascular fitness with bodyweight circuit training. More about that in a moment.

Third, you’re not going to win any powerlifting competitions if you only use bodyweight exercises. However, as my friend Bill Hartman recommends, most guys shouldn’t start bench pressing until they are able to do 50 pushups in a row. Can you do that? That’s a good challenge.

And if you build up to being able to do 30 consecutive dips and 15 consecutive pullups, you’re going to be pretty strong on the bench press, don’t you think? But if you really want to deadlift 405, then yes, you can’t do that on bodyweight exercises alone.

But what can you do with bodyweight training? Well, you can…

Build an amazing and sexy beach body – Many of the men and women on fitness magazine covers use a lot of bodyweight exercises, and some of the guys never touch a weight at all

Build stronger abs and reduce low back pain – Using the total body ab exercises and so many of the new, cool “core training” bodyweight movements, while avoiding situps and crunches.

That last point might come as a surprise to you, but there are in fact many bodyweight exercises that you should never do, including sit-ups and crunches. There are very few exceptions when those exercises should be done. For most other bodyweight exercises, everything is situational.

For example, jump training is a great form of advanced bodyweight exercise, however you shouldn’t do jump training on concrete. Another exercise, lunges, are great for many people, but not for overweight beginners who can’t do the exercise properly without falling over or losing body position. So each bodyweight exercise must be done with proper form and under the right circumstances.

In my other articles, we’ll show you how to do all these bodyweight exercises properly, and you’ll discover cool moves such as:

Beginner Bodyweight Exercises

Hip extension

Plank

1-leg hip extension

Kneeling pushup

Side plank

Stickup

Upper Body Bodyweight Exercises

Pushups: Grasshopper, Spiderman, Close-grip, Elevated, Off-set, and many more

Total Body Ab Bodyweight Exercises

Advanced Bodyweight Exercises

Burpees, Lunge Jumps, the Kong, and many more

As you can see, you’ll be able to have a LOT of fun with bodyweight training. It’s not just pushups, situps, squats, and crunches, but instead hundreds of unique movements that make your fat burning workouts fun to do, anytime, anywhere.

And after you learn all of these exercises, I’ll show you how to put them into advanced workouts, such as my Bodyweight Cardio fat burning system. This is a mix of all types of bodyweight exercises in a unique, high rep, moderate to high intensity circuit. This is hybrid training at its best.

In fact, my bodyweight cardio workout series is one of my most popular training methods, because it allows people to replace interval training when they don’t have access to cardio machines or hill sprints. You’ll be shocked at how intense these workouts can be, and how your heart rate will dramatically increase for maximum fitness benefits.

How to choose the Right Bodyweight Exercises for you

As you’ve discovered on your short introductory journey to bodyweight training, there are a lot of advanced bodyweight exercises to choose from. And that’s why you need to be careful.

At first you might think that bodyweight exercise workouts are not advanced, and you might jump into advanced circuits or movements too fast. So I urge you to be conservative and build up slowly. Soon you could be doing handstand pushups supersetted with vertical jumps, followed by the Kong and a set of 15 pullups. But that’s probably not going to happen today, so keep reading for more articles on bodyweight workouts that are right for your fitness level.

So until research scientists actually start giving bodyweight exercises and workouts the attention they deserve, keep coming back for more bodyweight workout ideas that are proven – thanks to thousands of Turbulence Training clients all over the world – to build muscle and burn fat without equipment.